Welcome to Tuesday Teasers with ZA Maxfield! This week we have author Rick R. Reed joining us!

Fans of Teaser Tuesdays know what’s going to happen here:

I’ll post a snippet from one of Rick’s books with the character names asterisked out.

Your mission is to guess which of Rick’s books the excerpt comes from! Email your answer to William at AuthorAssistants (at) gmail DOT com. Please be sure to put “Teaser Tuesday” in the subject line! I’ll draw a random winner each week. It’s that simple! Come play along… If you guess correctly, you’ll be entered to win a prize! Rick had graciously offered up an ebook copy of LEGALLY WED!

Here’s a little bit about Rick R. Reed:

Rick R. Reed is all about exploring the romantic entanglements of gay men in contemporary, realistic settings. While his stories often contain elements of suspense, mystery and the paranormal, his focus ultimately returns to the power of love. He is the author of dozens of published novels, novellas, and short stories. He is a three-time EPIC eBook Award winner (for Caregiver, Orientation and The Blue Moon Cafe). Raining Men and Caregiver have both won the Rainbow Award for gay fiction.  Lambda Literary Review has called him, “a writer that doesn’t disappoint.” Rick lives in Seattle with his husband and a very spoiled Boston terrier. He is forever “at work on another novel.”
Find out more about Rick on his website, Twitter, Facebook, blog, or email him.

HERE’s the snippet:

**** shifted himself gingerly, trying not to awaken the guy snoring next to him. He angled his ass to the edge of the bed, on his side, and took in the sleeping stranger’s countenance. He looked to be about forty, with tight dark-brown curls, olive skin that was most likely Mediterranean in origin, and a big nose. His mouth was open, and, judging from his snores, **** surmised he probably didn’t need to worry about waking him. A line of drool ran from the corner of his mouth down his cheek. The scent of alcohol perfumed the air.

**** got himself up to a sitting position, casting one more glance over at his latest “relationship.” He had met him the night before at Charlie’s, an unassuming little neighborhood gay bar, still on Capitol Hill but away from its gay epicenter on Broadway. Charlie’s was on Fifteenth Avenue, sandwiched between a coffee shop and a vintage clothing store, just down the street from the Safeway.

Their drunken gazes had connected in the mirror hanging over the bar. Once **** had sent the guy a beer, it wasn’t long before **** was following the guy back to this very apartment, a run-down studio in an attic of an old house on Seventeenth.

He couldn’t recall what the guy’s name was, or if, indeed, they had ever exchanged names. It didn’t matter. The guy had fallen asleep with ****’s mouth on his half-erect cock and had yet to rouse—or become aroused.

Silently, with the grayish light of a summer’s dawn filtering in through half drawn mini-blind slats, **** dressed, thinking of that old Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?” which pined, in a bluesy way, for something more.

**** wanted something more. More than one-night stands with strangers. More than online hookups that could sometimes result in good sex, but never went any further. More than a job, even though the one he had helped him pay his share of the expenses on his sister’s town house a couple of miles away. He had yet to share his town house with anyone else. He didn’t know why. His occupation, taken up on a whim, had spiraled out of control, making him someone he didn’t even know, in spite of his success.

But what he really wanted was someone to wake up next to who was not a drunken stranger, sleeping one off.

He hoped to one day wake up to a smile, to familiarity.

He was thirty-four years old, and what did he have to show for it? He lived as a roommate with his sister. His last boyfriend, an English major he was certain he’d spend the rest of his life with, had been when he was in college in Eugene, Oregon. He had a job, but again, it was a secret occupation, and it was kind of an independent contractor sort of thing, so he had no healthcare, retirement plan, or any other benefits. Nor did he have the camaraderie of going into an office, which he imagined would be staffed by a quirky cast of characters akin to the one shown on the TV show, The Office. His love life, such as it was, was a string of men who, while some were hot in bed, were all commitment-phobic.

~ * ~ * ~

Thanks for joining us, Rick!

If you think you know what book this excerpt came from, don’t forget to email William at AuthorAssistants (at) gmail DOT com with your guess!